We’re still waiting on our house to be delivered. It’s out of our hands at this point, as the transporter says he needs a long stretch of dry days in order to safely deliver the house down our narrow and windy road. Given how stormy it’s been this late Winter (and now early Spring), there’s no telling when we’ll get enough good weather. All we can do is try not to stress about it too much and do productive things while we wait.
In the mean time, I’ve been working on arranging our little canvas utility shed temporary structure to give me a place to do work on rebooting Etherkit and also play a little radio. A four-foot workbench was retrieved from storage, which allows me space for my 3D printer and my IC-7300, which you can see in the banner image. I’ve made a handful of SSB POTA contacts over the last week, which has been pretty easy with 100 watts, versus the 10 watts of the IC-705 that I was previously using. I retrieved a Vibroplex Brass Racer CW paddle from storage as well, but unfortunately one of the finger boards broke, so I’ll have to replace it before I can do more CW operating. I’m loving that band conditions are so much better than they were over the last few years, and we’re not even at the top of the solar cycle yet. Now’s the time to enjoy the HF ham bands while we can.
I’ve also got a new 3D printer on the way to replace my current OG Ender-3. My Ender-3 has been heavily modded to improve performance but it’s still a bit too fiddly and slow for my tastes. Creality has been running a sale on their Ender-5 S1 in a bundle with the Sonic Pad device, which allows for remote printing, as well as faster and better prints with the Klipper firmware. In between the more stable form factor of the Ender-5 and the Klipper upgrade, I should be able to print things at significantly faster speeds, which will be important as I start to push out some prototypes for Project Yamhill.
Speaking of Yamhill, please head on over to my Substack to see the latest progress. I’m currently working on the front panel/LO board, which is probably the most complex module for the entire project. Consider this post a bit of a design review. I’d love to hear your feedback.
